Personal Finance

According to Bloomberg, “volatility in 2011 was twice the five-decade average. Yet despite all the “sound and fury,” the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ended 2011 with the smallest price change in 41 years. As investors focused on minimizing...

Before the market opened on November 30th, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, the US Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank announced a coordinated action to enhance their capacity to provide...

If I offered to loan you money at a 1% interest rate for you to invest, do you think you could generate a return in excess of your cost of borrowing?
The income attribution rules are really a number of provisions in the Income Tax Act that...

November was a flat month in the markets with many cross currents. Rising economic stats were a positive while, the concerns of the European Debt crisis and a bailout of Ireland weighed on equities. Falling bond markets (rising interest...

We view many different opinions and note them in this newsletter. From these opinions we develop our view on the market direction. Certainly I do get criticized when this view has been perceived to be wrong for a period of time. ...

“According to the Investment Company Institute, the primary aggregator of mutual fund activity, total mutual fund assets (bond, stocks and money funds) are $12.3 trillion, down just $11 billion, or .09%, from the all-time high of October 2007....

Do you want to make a return every year or do you want to move with the markets?
To put it another way - Do you want to have an absolute return, or do you want to try to outperform the benchmark? Our industry (our team included) publishes...

“In another move by the Chinese authorities to rein in its booming economy, China’s central bank yesterday announced the third increase this year in the amount banks must hold as reserves. These measures, together with large stock issuance,...

Were we Americans alone in our troubles? Hardly. The Asian tsunami of 2004 killed more than 200,000 people. And our financial meltdown quickly spread around the developed world. Yet from our lofty perch overlooking the 20th century — the American...

As I write this on October 4th the equity markets are falling back towards their respective 50 day moving averages. When a market hits that point, a market is essentially in the middle of the range for the last 50 days. If it breaks this...